Protecting private life

You go somewhere, you buy something, you apply for a job, you pay your bills : you live... and at each of those moments of your life, your personal information is used, collected, processed. In order to protect your right to private life, with regard to the automatic processing of your personal data, the Council of Europe elaborated the "Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data".

Thirty years after its entry into force, this Convention still remains the only binding international legal instrument in the field, with a potential worldwide scope of application.

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Beyond

The Council of Europe has released this hard-hitting short film to highlight the dangers posed by those who wish to illegally obtain private data.

The film shows a data intruder running through a building and downloading one victim's personal data at home, another's medical records during an examination by a doctor and a third victim's bank details during a transaction at his bank. It ends with a reminder that the Council of Europe has a convention on data protection.

Handbook on European data protection law

This Handbook is a comprehensive guide to European data protection law designed to familiarise people who are not specialised in the field of data protection with this area of law. It provides an overview of the Council of Europe’s and the European Union’s applicable legal frameworks and explains key jurisprudence of both the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union.